The Senate takes up the second reading on Wednesday of the bill intended to regulate the use of public authorities to consulting firms, the elected representatives of the upper house wishing to exempt communities from the obligations provided for by this text. Even if the communities were removed from the scope of the text by the senators – elected by the leaders of these same communities – they could then be reintroduced by the National Assembly.
Approximately four months after the adoption of the text at first reading in the National Assembly, the elected representatives of the Law Commission will examine it from 9:30 a.m., before an examination in public session scheduled for May 28. Several amendments aim to exclude local authorities from the scope of the text, after they were included under the leadership of the presidential majority in the National Assembly.
The text “is the fruit of a commission of inquiry” whose scope was limited to the State, without including communities, insists its rapporteur Cécile Cukierman (CRCE group with a communist majority) to AFP. President of the Syntec Conseil union, which represents the firms, David Mahé also does not consider it “justified” to subject communities to the new obligations. “It would be very burdensome for (local, editor’s note) administrations and consulting companies, an activity made up mainly of small and medium-sized businesses,” he argues.
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In the midst of the presidential campaign, a Senate commission of inquiry published a report in March 2022 describing the State’s use of private consultants as a “sprawling” phenomenon. Seven months later, the text was largely adopted at first reading by the upper house. It then took more than a year to be included on the agenda of the National Assembly, the government questioning its usefulness after having itself taken a series of measures to control the use of consultants.
“We cannot say that there was no consideration” on the part of the government of the abuses pointed out by the commission of inquiry, recognizes Cécile Cukierman. But this consideration is not “sufficient”, she believes. The rapporteur thus hopes to restore a provision repealed by the National Assembly, so that the new obligations apply to consulting services already in progress when the law was promulgated and not only to future contracts. David Mahé wants to exclude from the scope of the text certain “operational” IT consulting services (maintenance for example) and restrict the number of consultants concerned by declarations of interest.